Domestic animals are usually rather picky about their food; and if the food has been around for sometime, it becomes stale and unpalatable to the pet. On the other hand, if a large quantity of food is immediately available, some pets may gorge themselves and become overweight and unhealthy. In an attempt to rectify this problem, especially when the pet owners are not in the home, various types of feeders have been disclosed in the prior art for dogs, cats or other pets.
For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,527,191, a clock and timer are used to control the energization of a motor to drive a food discharge shaft to dispense the pet food via a chute to a feed pan. Additionally, a transverse shaft is geared to the food discharge shaft to control the opening of a valve in a water discharge pipe between a closed tank and a water trough, such that a measured amount of water is available to the pet simultaneously with the pet food.
A further example is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,949,909, wherein a vibrator is disposed within an insert sleeve suspended within the bottom opening of a frustoconically-shaped container for dispensing fish food. The vibrator includes a vibrating portion mounted on a food dispensing plate disposed a predetermined distance below an opening in the bottom of the insert sleeve. Additionally, vibrating devices are generally well known, wherein a motor drives a shaft carrying an eccentric weight, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,161,993 and 4,167,341.
Additional prior art patents known to the applicant are as follows:
______________________________________ Inventor(s) Patent No. ______________________________________ Kuxmann 1,207,938 Wolfe 2,701,548 Franklin 2,791,984 Decker 3,171,385 Strother 3,638,618 Gower 4,069,793 Longmore et al 4,077,699 Peterson 4,182,273 White 4,284,035 Scheidler 4,315,483 Fassauer 4,513,688 ______________________________________
Despite these teachings in the prior art, the need remains for a commercially practical, reliable, automatic pet feeder, one which may be readily programmed to deliver a substantially measured amount of pet food at a predetermined time.